"I see the future of my bookstore as being less about finding a particular book when somebody comes in, which I'll still be able to do, and more about browsing. That's a weakness of the Internet--it's really good about finding and bad about browsing. So we're looking at sections and trying to break them down into smaller sections. We're doing events like Schwartz did, but even more than before. We're hoping for two to three a week. There's a lot of ideas. As a smaller store, you have the ability to take more input from people."--Daniel Goldin, owner of Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis., in an interview with Decider Milwaukee.

More on the opening this fall of Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Shelf Awareness, June 1, 2009).

On their store blog, proud owners Jessica Stockton Bagnulo and Rebecca Fitting said "the lease is finalized, the contractors are on their way, and we've got an opening date target for Fort Greene's own independent bookstore! At last we can reveal the mystery location: On June 1, Greenlight Bookstore became the official tenant of 686 Fulton Street, at the corner of South Portland--right in the heart of Fort Greene." If all goes according to plan, they hope to open sometime in September.

Greenlight will occupy approximately 2,000 square feet, "just right for stocking a wide variety of books in many categories, and for hosting great author readings and other events, while still feeling cozy. The funky layout has both wide open spaces and nooks and crannies, perfect for a quiet browse, for reading a picture book with a child, or for chatting with friends and neighbors over a cup of coffee from Marquet, right next door."

The overall goal is "to make this a beautiful, welcoming space that incorporates the best traditions of bookstores and Brooklyn style, as well as the new energy and ideas that define our borough, and that we hope to bring to bookselling."

In a postscript, they also shared the good news that they have "just been approved for a business loan from the World Trade Center Small Business Recovery Fund, which means that we will definitely have the funding to make Greenlight Bookstore a reality. However, we're still accepting community lenders, since as we've been told by our mentors in bookselling, everything always costs more than you think it will."

---

Gary Cornell, owner of Black Oak Books, Berkeley, Calif., confirmed this week that the iconic Bay Area bookshop "is moving out. Cornell has been trying to negotiate a lease with landlord Ruegg and Ellsworth for several months," the Daily Planet reported, adding that "rumors started circulating in mid-May that Black Oak was leaving its 1491 Shattuck Ave. storefront and moving to San Pablo Avenue and Dwight Way."

The landlords "have been advertising the space for sale for at least three months by posting signs on the building and notices on the Internet," according to the Daily Planet.

---

Paper Cuts, the book blog at the New York Times, conducted "an entirely unscientific and admittedly small survey of booksellers," including a couple of indies, to find out what titles attracted their attention at BEA last weekend.

Geoffrey Jennings of Rainy Day Books, Fairway, Kan., praised Down Around Midnight by Robert Sabbag: "I am abrasive and jaded and I have read lots of things. I was reading the book at night and my wife came down and I said 'there is nothing you could say or do--in fact you could not even pay me--to stop reading this book.'"

Robert Sindelar, managing partner of Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Wash., told Paper Cuts he is looking forward to Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs and The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris.

---

Hodge-Podge Books, Albany, N.Y., will close June 30 after 27 years in business. In an "open letter to friends and customers" posted on the bookshop's website, owner Frank Hodge wrote: "Bad times have hit even a small shop such as Hodge-Podge. My mainstay of school orders has been slowing to a mere trickle. Our shop, never a large drop-in kind of place, has seen a part of our livelihood also dry up."  

Hodge recalled the many highlights of his time as a bookseller and thanked "the hundreds of people who attended our programs or who stopped to shop in the store. They came from States as far away as Alaska, Iowa, from Jersey to Florida to the far shores of British Columbia."

He also noted that, as far as the future of Hodge-Podge is concerned, "I cannot imagine a life without books, so I am hoping to enter the world of the Internet to continue my career surrounded by books."

---

Obituary Note: Bestselling fantasy author David Eddings died Tuesday. He was 77. Jane Johnson, publishing director at HarperCollins UK, told the Bookseller.com that Eddings was "a towering force of modern commercial fiction, a master of the epic, and a delight to work with. We'll miss him tremendously."

---

Ingram Publisher Services will distribute book titles--including the forthcoming Consumer Reports Best Baby Products (10th Edition)--published by Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org.

---

David Schiffman has been named director of digital publishing for Yale University Press. Schiffman will lead various initiatives, including the Digital Stalin Archive, Encounters: Chinese Culture and Language and the Anchor Yale Bible online program. Previously he led Social Media New Ventures at AOL; worked in Silicon Valley in software and web development, including serving as senior v-p of business development for Starpoint Solutions; and led business development at Sybase.

---

Colin McGee has joined Sellers Publishing as managing sales and key account director, book group. McGee brings more than 30 years of publishing experience to the new position, having previously worked for Random House South Africa, HarperCollins South Africa and more recently as key accounts sales manager at Tuttle Publishing.

Tomorrow morning on Imus in the Morning: Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, authors of Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography (Simon & Schuster, $25, 9781416559382/1416559388).

---

Saturday on NPR's All Things Considered: Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books, $27.50, 9780805082364/0805082360).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, June 6

9 a.m. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, author of This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President (Harper, $26.99, 9780061353475/0061353477), talks about her journey to the top office in Liberia. (Re-airs Saturday at 8 p.m. and Monday at 5 a.m.)
     
11 a.m. Book TV features live coverage of the 2009 Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest. (Re-airs Saturday at 11 p.m.)

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. For a segment first aired in 1994, Stephen Ambrose, author of D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (S&S, $18, 9780684801377/068480137X), discussed the invasion of Normandy.

9 p.m. Ross Donaldson, author of The Lassa Ward: One Man's Fight Against One of the World's Deadliest Diseases (St. Martin's, $24.95, 9780312377007/0312377002), chronicles his experiences working in a Sierra Leone hospital ward. (Re-airs Sunday 7 a.m.)

10 p.m. Afterwords. Mary Matalin interviews Stanley Greenberg, author of Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders (Thomas Dunne, $29.95, 9780312351526/0312351526). Greenberg recalls his work with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Ehud Barak, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and Nelson Mandela. (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m., Monday at 3 a.m. and Sunday, June 14, at 12 p.m.)

Sunday, June 7

9 a.m. Jonathan Schanzer, author of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan, $26.95, 9780230609051/0230609058), talks about what this ongoing conflict has meant for the Israel-Palestine peace process. (Re-airs Sunday at 11 p.m.)
     
12 p.m. In Depth. Bill Ayers, co-author--with Bernardine Dohrn--of Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press, $27.95, 9780883783108/088378310X), joins Book TV for a live interview. Viewers can participate in the discussion by calling in during the program or e-mailing questions to booktv@c-span.org. Dohrn will join the discussion in the final hour. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m. and Saturday, June 13, at 9 a.m.)

Jeff Nathanson will write and direct an adaptation of The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Summit Entertainment, which hopes "to capitalize on worldwide recognition of Houdini's name while potentially launching a franchise, is looking to take a more action-adventure tack--akin to the one taken by the upcoming Guy Ritchie-Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie."

---

Emile Hirsch will star in the title role of a modern-day version of Hamlet, to be directed by Catherine Hardwicke, whose recent projects include the movie based on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.

Variety reported that producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen credited Hirsch "with coming up with the idea for the modernized version. The producers noted that there hasn't been a movie version with an appropriately aged actor playing the role. Overture said it hopes to have a finished script in the coming months, with principal photography commencing soon thereafter."

Home by Marilynne Robinson was the judges' unanimous choice for this year's £30,000 (US$48,893) Orange Prize for best novel written by a woman, which was announced yesterday in a ceremony at London's Royal Festival Hall, the Guardian reported.

"All of the judges brought a couple of books to the table which they thought were definitely the contenders and Home was in all of our choices. We were in agreement," said Fi Glover, chair of the judging panel. She added that the book "does that wonderful thing of describing life that you almost knew about but never managed to put your finger on."

Robinson easily bested a shortlist that included Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else, Samantha Harvey's The Wilderness, Deirdre Madden's Molly Fox's Birthday, Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows and Ellen Feldman's Scottsboro.
 
Francesca Kay won the Orange Award for New Writers for her novel An Equal Stillness.

After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16, 9780618605729/061860572X, 336 pp., ages 14-up, May 2009)

Freymann-Weyr (My Heartbeat and The Kings Are Already Here) specializes in complex characters who nonetheless seem like people we know. "Seem" is the operative word. She takes us in at the surface level and then plunges us into the depths of her characters' inner workings. Leigh Hunter is far more thoughtful than his well-off handsome-athlete exterior might indicate. Told through a third-person narration from Leigh's perspective, the story begins as a 21-year-old Leigh runs into the woman he fell in love with at 17, Maia Morland. "She seemed . . . to consider him. To consider all the variables of Leigh Hunter, her most devoted boyfriend from high school, turned murderous assailant, and now before her." The novel unfolds in flashback, infused with the suspense of what led Leigh to that murderous point.
 
Maia remains in many ways a mystery, hiding behind her odd rituals, such as avoiding doorknobs and handshakes, and her eating disorder; readers will identify with Leigh who, while grappling with his feelings for Maia and his obsession with protecting her, comes to better understand himself. Leigh leaves New York to move in with his father in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, along with his stepmother and stepsister, Millie, with whom Leigh has a close relationship, after Millie's father dies. The U.S. is on the brink of war with Iraq: "That the impending war unleashed confusion in everyone was clear, but for Leigh it highlighted how little he understood his own life." What it means to be privileged enough not to even consider going to war is just one of the subtexts for Leigh's story. The author writes perceptively and often with humor, as with Leigh's observation about Astra, his girlfriend at the time he meets Maia: "Being with Astra was like having won a prize, which was, perhaps, not the right way to think about one's girlfriend." This is one of the aspects of himself that Leigh recognizes in the popular-athlete classmates at his new school. It's something he'd rather not own about himself--and something he comes face to face with when calamity strikes at the heart of Leigh and Maia's relationship. Freymann-Weyr asks us to re-evaluate the people we may have underestimated and to acknowledge that sometimes it's not about arriving at the right answers but rather asking the right questions.--Jennifer M. Brown

Let it be recorded that Friday, May 29, at 8:59 a.m., a bookseller complained on Twitter about the meager food selection at the BEA Book and Author Breakfast, thus fulfilling one of my prophecies from last week's column, Seen & Heard at BEA: The Preview Edition. I wasn't keeping score during the rest of the weekend, but I suspect that, at one time or another, most of the predictions had their moments, too.

I feel like I've read a zillion words this week about BookExpo America 2009. When combined with my own observations and conversations there, I come away with decidedly mixed impressions about the show and the future of the book trade. A trio of disparate visual images partly sums up my reaction:

• A cartoon of a man in a flowing robe on a city street (in New York, let's say), holding a sign that reads, "The end of the book is near."
• An ostrich with a book clutched under one flightless wing and head planted firmly in the sand.
• A not-so-young action hero holding hands with an emerging young actress as they run just beyond the reach of the consuming fireball from an explosion, escaping into what promises to be an exciting and glamorous, socially-networked future.

Perhaps I should add one more because, in retrospect, it now seems like a distant relative of the general air of uncertainty. On Thursday morning--as I walked from my hotel toward the 34th St. crosstown bus stop near Sixth Ave.--I saw a guy panhandling. He was shaking a plastic change bucket with one hand and talking on his cell phone with the other. At the time I thought it was just a bad marketing decision. Now I wonder if it has deeper meaning.

Fortunately, these images weren't my primary takeaway from BEA 2009. In fact, I headed home Sunday in a good mood because, appropriately enough, I was thinking about . . . words.

Words got us here in the first place, and words will get us to wherever we're headed next, regardless of the vehicle we choose for their transport.

Words strung in 140-character tweets over a couple of months turned into one of the hottest parties of the weekend. The BEAtweetup event at the Greenhouse club Friday night attracted a crowd of about 400 book people through word-of-mouth (word-of-tweet?) alone.

We've always known words can draw a crowd.

In conversations on the show floor, at panels and seminars, certain words were used again and again. Since I'm a writer, reader and bookseller, words are what matter most, so it's probably no surprise that I seem to be clutching a few of them in my hand, like Jack's magic beans, as I recall moments from this year's BEA.

Words like storytelling, authentic, content, listening.

Words that book people already know and love, but whose meanings are evolving on what sometimes seems like an hourly basis.

Old words that stay fiercely relevant, even as the pages upon which they reside transform in ways we've just begun to explore.

Hear the words:

"Things that go viral are about content," said Bill Wasik, senior editor for Harper's magazine, at a viral marketing session. "At the end of the day, viral stuff is all about stories and storytelling. It's about the way we tell stories about ourselves and about our cultures."

"We have to be more authentic because it's all there to be seen," said social media consultant Chris Brogan on a social networking panel. Erik Qualman, online marketing v-p for EF Education, was on the same panel and added, "It's all about who's the best listener. It's about listening first."

"Every company has the ability to pump out content. Content will always win," said Wine Library TV guru Gary Vaynerchuk, noting enthusiastically that he is "obsessed with storytelling."

"With very little money and with people who are authentic, you can go a long way," suggested David Singleton of AARP, on a panel about marketing online to Baby Boomers.

I heard variations on this refrain, using the prime vocabulary, all weekend long, in conversations both private and public. Whatever may be happening to the world of books--whatever our hopes and fears--words still mattered most at BEA.

I'll have more words tomorrow about where some this intersects with booksellers.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)